Chris Parker. Judge David Hernandez accepted Parker had offered ‘limited’ assistance to some of the injured, but said he had an ulterior motive.
Photograph: Greater Manchester police/PA

A homeless man hailed as a hero after the Manchester Arena bomb has been sentenced to four years and three months in prison after admitting stealing from the victims he claimed to have helped.

Chris Parker, 33, was caught on CCTV “deliberately” targeting people as they lay seriously injured following the attack on the Ariana Grande concert last May, Manchester crown court heard.

He stole a purse from one woman and then used her debit card in McDonald’s, and took a mobile phone from a teenage girl who had been badly hurt. He ignored calls from the 14-year-old’s desperate friends and relatives, handing it in to police only the following morning.

The girl’s mother told the court how appalled she was to learn what Parker had done: “I was just astounded as I thought that I had seen the worst thing that a person could do to others and this was yet another blow as to how despicable people could be,” she wrote in a statement.

Sentencing Parker on Tuesday, Judge David Hernandez said: “You stole from people who were seriously injured at a time when others were either dead or dying. It is hard to contemplate a more reprehensible set of circumstances.”

The judge accepted that Parker had offered “limited” assistance to some of those injured. He could be seen on TV offering a T-shirt from the merchandise stand to a small girl, directed someone in a wheelchair to the venue exit and held an injured woman’s phone to her ear when her husband called.

But he had an ulterior motive, the judge said: “You presented yourself as a hero. Sadly you were not the hero that you pretended to be. You were just a common thief.”

Pauline Healey, who was seriously injured along with her daughter as they waited in the foyer for her grandchildren, said in her victim impact statement that she remembered Parker.

She recalled “the initial sense of relief when the defendant approached, believing that he was there to help the seriously injured”, Louise Brandon, prosecuting, told the court.

When the truth emerged, Healey said she was at a loss to understand “how another person could look to exploit such an attack for his own self-gain whilst surrounded by a scene of tragedy and suffering”.

Healey’s 14-year-old granddaughter, Sorrell Leczkowski, died in the attack on 22 May. Parker took a picture of them both as they lay in the foyer and sold it to a journalist for £100, the court heard.

More than £50,000 was raised for Parker as part of a crowdfunding effort following the attack after he told journalists he had rushed to help the victims. He never received any of the money raised for him and all of the donations were refunded following his guilty plea earlier in January.

Parker originally pleaded not guilty then skipped bail over Christmas and failed to attend his trial on 2 January. The following day he was found hiding in an attic in Halifax and brought to court, where he pleaded guilty to two counts of theft and one fraud charge.

His barrister, John Broadley, said Parker had asked him to apologise and express his “deep sorrow and shame” – an apology the lawyer conceded would likely be greeted with “an element of cynicism”.

Parker was given two four-year sentences for the theft charges and 18 months for the fraud charge, to run concurrently. In addition he was given three months for breaking bail. The judge also imposed a criminal behaviour order, which bans Parker from Manchester city centre for 10 years.

“Parker exploited these people when they were at their most vulnerable and needed the help of those around them. I cannot begin to imagine what they have been through and I want to thank them for their courage.”